Ebola Crisis Could Last through 2015

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A few ladies tool around on a motorcycle at the ocean’s edge in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Although Ebola enters its sixth month in the capital, people can only sustain sadness for so long, and the girls seem to be enjoying themselves this afternoon. They’re taking it “small, small,”—meaning slowly—since no one wants to end up in hospitals now. Credit: Amy Maxmen

Paramount Chief Alhaji Amara B. Vangahun (in white) presides over some 25,000 people in the Nongowa Chiefdom in Kenema, the eastern district of Sierra Leone. Government officials may enforce the law, but people listen to the chief. Kenema was a hot spot for Ebola a few months ago, but Chief Vangahun fought it back by demanding that his constituents refrain from parties, religious congregations, washing the deceased before burial, and any other practices that might fuel the virus’s spread. Credit: Amy Maxmen

When Ebola arrived in Kenema, in eastern Sierra Leone, doctors, nurses and laboratory technicians hardly knew what it was—never mind the precautions they needed to take to protect themselves. Fliers on the walls of Kenema General Hospital commemorate dozens of staff who succumbed to the terrible disease. Most were in their twenties. Credit: Amy Maxmen

At Kenema General Hospital, many of the brave staff who care for patients and handle corpses have not been paid for two months. Here, Mohammed Koroma stands in front of the overflowing morgue. His job is to carry dead bodies to the morgue, clean them and send them to the graveyard. He went on strike but was coaxed back to work by his supervisor, who asked him to volunteer for his country. He’s here handling this vital job, but he’s also tired, hungry and needs money for rent. “We have no power,” Koroma says. Credit: Amy Maxmen

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The blood from people who have survived Ebola might help cure patients, so some survivors, including the two people above, have donated their blood. I ask the woman, Fudia Sesay, why she donated. She answers: “I watched 20 or 30 people die beside me for weeks in the Ebola ward. You watch, and you think, I’ll be next. You wake up, and the person you talked with the day before is being dragged out by men in white suits. When you walk to the toilet, you jump over dying bodies, and you cry as you do it. I’m donating my blood so no one has to go through all that.” Credit: Amy Maxmen

A woman in the Kamboma village pounds palm tree seeds to collect the nuts within. Later, she’ll fry, pound and boil the nuts to extract their oils. Normally she sells palm oil at the market—but she can’t now because her village has cut itself off from contact with outsiders to prevent Ebola from entering. That strategy seems to have worked, but the village has become poorer. Now the community must subsist almost exclusively on the products made within its borders. Credit: Amy Maxmen

A medical student catches a ride into villages on the outskirts of Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he will check on people who feel ill. If he thinks they show signs of Ebola, such as a fever, vomiting or bloody-red eyes, he’ll call for an ambulance. Credit: Amy Maxmen

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“The Swab Team.” Men on motorcycles collect saliva samples (“swabs”) from people who have died, place them in a safe container on the back of their bikes, and ride them to a laboratory where laboratory technicians test the samples for Ebola with molecular techniques. Credit: Amy Maxmen

Children laugh and kick a soccer ball behind the wall of a courtyard near Ascension Road in Freetown. For all the hardship and terror that Ebola causes, Sierra Leoneans astound me daily with their humor, compassion and breathtaking bravery. Credit: Amy Maxmen

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The Ebola crisis in West Africa that claimed its first victim exactly a year ago is likely to last until the end of 2015, according to a scientist who helped to discover the virus.

Two-year-old Emile Ouamouno died in the remote village of Meliandou in southern Guinea on Dec. 28 last year after suffering from a fever, headache and diarrhea. His 3-year-old sister, mother and grandmother died days later.

These deaths went unnoticed and the disease smoldered undetected, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It was not until March that health officials in Guinea started to realize something worrisome was happening.

Ebola had never struck in West Africa and it took a while to recognize the start of what has become the world's worst outbreak of the virus that has killed more than 7,500 people and infected nearly 19,500 in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

By August, the WHO declared the epidemic to be a "public health emergency of international concern".

Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and part of a team to discover Ebola in 1976, said progress was being made in trying to stop the virus spreading but it would take time to develop vaccines.

"This will be an epidemic with a very long tail, and a bumpy tail ... we need to be ready for a long effort, a sustained effort [for] probably the rest of 2015," Piot told the BBC on Wednesday.

The hemorrhagic fever, which causes vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding, is spread by contact with bodily fluids of the sick and it has no known cure.

Scientists studying Ebola since its discovery in Zaire - now Democratic Republic of Congo - in 1976 have long suspected fruit bats as being the natural hosts.

Piot, who has just returned from Sierra Leone, said the virus had peaked in Liberia where it has claimed about 3,376 lives, according to WHO figures.

He said it was likely to peak in Sierra Leone in the next few weeks where the virus has claimed 2,556 lives so far. Sierra Leone has almost half of confirmed cases.

Simple treatments such as intravenous fluids and antibiotics had driven mortality rates in Sierra Leone to as low as one in three compared to about 70 percent previously, he said.

"Treatment centers have now been established across the country with British help. You don't see any longer the scenes where people are dying in the streets," said Piot who has previously criticized the WHO's slow response to the outbreak.

He said developing a vaccine was essential "so that when there is another epidemic or maybe when this epidemic drags on for a long time, that we have that vaccine available".

This week the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded contracts to NewLink Genetics Corp and GlaxoSmithKline Plc for faster development of vaccines.

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